How can I create a hierarchy in SSAS?

Question

I have the table order with following fields:

ID
Serial
Visitor
Branch
Company

Assume there are relations between Visitor, Branch and Company in the database. But every visitor can be in more Branch . How can I create a hierarchy between these three fields for my order table.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

You would need to create a denormalised dimension table, with the distinct result of the denormalisation process of the table order. In this case, you would have many rows for the same visitor. One for each branch.

In your fact table, the activity record which would have BranchKey in the primary key, would reference this dimension. This obviously would be together with the VisitorKey...

Then in SSAS you would need to build the hierarchy, and set the relationships between the keys... When displaying this data in a client, such as excel, you would drag the hierarchy in the rows, and when expanding, data from your fact would fit in according to the visitors branch...

With regards to dimensions, it's important to set relationships between the attributes, as this will give you a massive performance gain when processing the dimension, and the cube. Take a look at this article for help regarding that matter http://www.bidn.com/blogs/DevinKnight/ssis/1099/ssas-defining-attribute-relationships-in-2005-and-2008 . In this case it's the same approach also for '12.